A WEEK whose first four days have been marked by no accentuation of crisis is by common consent being described as a period of " lull " in international affairs. But if swords...

countries, is taking every precaution to lessen the danger facing her, when Germany and Italy each have a million men under arms and Hungary and Rumania each 500,000. She has...

arrived in Berlin on Tuesday with his hand substantially strengthened for his discussions with Herr von Ribbentrop. The oppor- tune announcement last week of Great Britain's...

the importance of President Roosevelt's Note to Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini than the simultaneous announcement by the Navy Department of the United States that the whole of...

week gives some valuable estimates of the relative strengths of the British and German Air Forces. One calculation suggests that the total number of German first-line aeroplanes...

Menzies, the late Attorney- General (he recently resigned through disagreement with his party over a question of national insurance), as leader of the United Australia Party in...

Chiang Kai-shek's headquarters, that a Chinese counter-offensive would be launched immediately "on all fronts from Inner Mongolia to South China." The offensive has been pre-...

J. M. Keynes has published in The Times two articles which merit the closest attention on the financial problems of The coming year. His most striking statement is that " the...

Sir John Simon's Budget for next Tuesday is quite forgotten, and the best debates these days are amongst Members in the Lobbies and the Smoking Room. The Ministry of Supply...

on Tuesday, on the internacional situation, took a full and expectant House by surprise. The very careful addition of the U.S.S.R. as one of the countries with which the...

Hope Simpson made in Man- chester on Tuesday for the raising of an international loan indicates the only method of dealing adequately with the refugee problem. The settlement of...

put into operation the ex- ensive plans for the control and distribution of food in time of war which the Government has drawn up it will start .rom a point which was only...

events which caused the break in the Easter Recess were already overshadowed, when the House met again on Tuesday, by Mr. Roosevelt's message. This was almost the sole topic of...

the House of Commons on Tuesday on the shortage of nurses was important when it is realised that nursing is now more urgently than ever a part of national defence. The Report of...

succeed one another in the international field that in the interval between one issue of this journal and the next the whole situa- tion may have radically changed. It has this...

P ROVIDENCE was in an ironical mood when, fifty years ago this week, it was ordained that Charles Chaplin and Adolf Hitler should make their entry into the world within four...

in the petulant anger of its comments on President Roose- velt's message, and the lowest depths of foulness were sounded by the newspaper Tevere on Tuesday, when it was thought...

seems to have gone completely unrecorded in the British Press. That perhaps is not surprising, as it had little bearing on current politics, and was delivered on the same...

a note from one of the editors of The Fleet Street Letter, giving reasons why The Fleet Street Letter should be con- sidered a particularly good Letter. I have no doubt it...

I CANNOT help sharing the uneasiness which some people have expressed, and more have felt, that the ' Repulse ' should be occupied in carrying the King and Queen to Canada at a...

diplomatic problem. Whenever a new Ambassador to Italy is appointed the question of recognising Italy's various illicit acquisitions is involved. France left her Embassy at Rome...

favour the establishment of free birth-control clinics for married people. But it is not true, I believe, that the late Dr. Malthus is being made Honorary Ex-President of the

view of Sir Ronald Lindsay's impending retire- ment. A professional diplomatist, such as Sir Miles Lamp- son, may, of course, be appointed, but there is an immense advantage in...

By PROFESSOR G. R. DRIVER I N the innumerable discussions official and unofficial on the future of Palestine far too little attention has been paid to the fact that while the...

By A BALKAN CORRESPONDENT U NDER the pressure of recent events Mr. Chamberlain has decided to change his policy. The British Govern- ment intends to organise a front of...

By ERWIN D. CANHAM Washington. IN discussing the present American relationship to the "Stop Hider" movement, one must again differentiate between various important sections of...

By PROFESSOR C. K. WEBSTER T HE great enterprise of the Cambridge University Press has been completed after more than forty years have passed since the plan was first...

By J. M. SPA1GHT HE revolutionary change in our foreign policy involved in the conclusion of the defensive pact with Poland is particularly welcome from the point of view of the...

By ANTHONY POWELL T HE wars and political disturbances of the r7th century, like those same elements at the present day, caused men, longing for some evidence that life...

By JOHN McNEILLIE U PON Craig's croft a black sow was " apigging " in an open-sided straw shed. Craig sat on a barrel under me flickering byre-lamp waiting for the event. It...

strain in the German character ! We also have our heroes, yet we do not regard heroism as a destiny ; there is a vast difference between Westminster Abbey and Valhalla. Their...

startle some memory-pigeon from a slumber of twenty-six years. I was arguing yesterday upon the fascinating theme of corporal punishment when suddenly I became aware that a...

By HAROLD NICOLSON F ever I become demonstrably insane, the collapse of my faculties will be heralded by panic of a curious kind. It is not of losing my memory that I am...

to suicidal mania ; they possess, in fact, a highly developed instinct foi self-preservation. Signor Mussolini, moreover, is an ostentatious but realistic man. True it is that...

1913, since the news of the fall of Adrianople had just reached the Turkish capital. We sat there, looking out across the calm sea to Asia, rejoicing that peace now seemed...

READJUSTMENT IN FINLAND By FRANK CLEMENTS Helsingfors, April. I N the centre of Helsingfors there stands a simple monu- ment to commemorate the German soldiers who fell in...

IT is possible that Mr. Sherwood as a film writer does small credit to Mr. Sherwood as a dramatist : I have not seen his plays, but Idiot's Delight has exactly the same pseudo...

THE THEATRE "Of mice and Men." By John Steinbeck. At the Gate Theatre. Of Mice and Men is an entirely unsubtle and extremely effective play. It describes an episode in the...

The London Festival Os Sunday, which is St. George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday, the London Music Festival begins, and thereafter for a space of five weeks there will be on...

Claude Monet OF all the great French painters of the nineteenth century, Monet is the most difficult to characterise in positive terms. It is so much easier to say what he was...

There is a new nesting-box that a pair of blue tits visit continually, though they have not yet begun to build. They go in and out of the box, but spend most of their visiting...

The scene of the most remarkable example of such survival in my own experience is a garden in the Isle of Wight. Up one wall of the castellated house grew a thick covering of...

of the larger country houses to throw the gardens open to the public at a small charge collected for the hospitals. In one of these an extensive rock-garden had lately been...

On revisiting the garden of a house that he left in 1887 a gardener found in full flower a certain pink hyacinth that lie had particular reason to remember. He knew to an inch...

A new idea is being put into action by the British Association, and it should prove of value to the farmers of the Empire. This association, whose object is the encouragement of...

Both water and fire, those excellent servants, may prove disastrous to birds as to men. We saw last year the ruin of the best of all bird sanctuaries due to the incursion of the...

It was noticed in more than one district that imported species of bird—especially thrush, blackbird, sparrow and Java dove—stood the hard trial better than the native bird ; and...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Snt,—Mr. Roosevelt's demarche promises, at the moment of writing, to be a helpful move ; but I confess to having suffered some hours of acute...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Public opinion in England today is like a scattered flock of sheep being quickly and skilfully penned by the Fear that Barks. The majority...

[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] S1R,—I have recently had a conversation with an individual who is in a position to know what is happening in Spain, and it occurred to me that...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Reviewing Mr. Garratt's Gibraltar and the Mediter- ranean in last week's issue of The Spectator, Professor Carr observed that the attitude...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—I have read the article "Hitler and Hackney," by Mr. Greenwood, in your issue of March 31st. Perhaps I may be allowed to make a few...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—May I add a few personal notes to Miss Rathbone's letter about warnings concerning the exact date of Herr Hitler's march into...

[To the Ediior of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—In a recent walking tour in Sussex I had the following experience. The hotes, to which I had written in advance, in view of the holiday...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—May I, as a Christian layman, make a plea that the teaching of Christianity, especially as it affects the question of peace and war, be...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Stu,—Mr. McMillan may be right and the Celts clearer thinkers than the Anglo-Saxons, but indeed I find my working-class friends, Celt and...

SIR,—What exactly are the implications of Mr. G. M. Young's letter? Writing of "the rape of India," he suggests that the first man (Burke perhaps) who used that phrase was a...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — Your article concerning Palmer calls to my mind an anecdote that was told when his evil deeds were still remem- bered. It was said that...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sm,—By mischance your issue of March 31st did not reach me until April 54th. Will you allow me, thus tardily, to reply to Mr. Stephen Spender's...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — Miss Margaret Knight in her article in your last issue draws timely attention to the misuse of statistics to support particular theories,...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Thank you for your article "Debits and Credits" on our English way of life today. We are naturally proud of our assets but it is well to...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Linklater's complaint that in my review of Iudas I have deliberately (and I suppose maliciously) misquoted him is a mere quibble. The words "...

[D'un correspondant parisienj ON ne sait au juste si c'est la pabc-guerre ou la guerre-paix, mais on comprend trop bien que cela pourrait tourner A la guerre tout court. Ne...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—I do not know if you can find space to insert Disraeli's prophetic vision, written eighty years ago, defining Britain's foreign policy, but...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — May I do something which I have been on the point of doing more than once in the last two years? It is to thank your German correspondent...

notify THE SPECTATOR office BEFORE MIDDAY on MONDAY OF EACH WEEK. The name, the previous address to which the paper has been sent and receipt reference number should be quoted.

PAGE Th. t Cambridge Ancient History (The Warden of Wadham College) . . 676 Eastern Religions and Western Thought (C. E. M. Joad) ... 678 The Military Strength of the Powers...

Thought. By Sir S. Radha- krishnan. (Clarendon Press. 15s.) THE theme of this book may be simply stated. The present generation has witnessed the decay of religion in the West....

THIS book contains statements of fact and expressions of opinion, the former of which will assist students of military affairs, while the latter will provoke discussion wherever...

My Years in Germany. By Martha Dodd. (Gollancz. ios. 6d.) EDUCATION in Germany is, in a sense, the subject of both these books. Erika Mann's book is a study of National...

THERE are undoubtedly graver fallacies than those of Major Douglas, and there are also fallacies for which there is less excuse. Der Stiirmer expresses a more disastrous error...

By FORREST REID CERTAINLY there could be no greater variety of scene than that presented by the four novels on my list—Spain, Peru, China, Japan, France, New England and Old...

By CUSTOS ONC.E again it is stalemate in Throgmorton Street, at least so far as British industrial equities are concerned. Impressed by the intrinsic merits of the shares and...

HUDSON'S BAY PROFITS In view of the deterioration of general trade conditions in Canada last year, shareholders in the Hudson's Bay Com- pany must have been prepared for a...

has staged a remarkable recovery in recent years is that engaged in manufacturing coke and benzol and similar products. It is not merely that coke prices, which are the...

Company's Spanish properties fell to General Franco in the early days of the Spanish War. Since then the company's troubles have been requisitions and exchange restrictions, the...

All this is disappointing, of course, to stockholders of the Cunard Steam Ship Company, the parent concern, which is in arrears with its preference dividends from June, 1931....

accounts of the Cunard White Star that the war in the Atlantic is, in present con- ditions, one of those struggles in which there is no financial success for any of the...

EAGLE STAR INSURANCE COMPANY, LIMITED SUCCESSFUL YEAR'S OPERATIONS STRONG FINANCIAL POSITION DIVIDEND 30 PER CENT. GENERAL INSURANCE In the general insurance account, which...

MENDARIS (SUMATRA) RUBBER AND PRODUCE ESTATES A COMPACT UNIT THE CHAIRMAN'S REPORT THE twenty-eighth ordinary general meeting of the Mendaris (Sumatra) Rubber & Produce...

P. H. Galloway, the wholesale chemists and hairdressers. showed a decreased profit of £19,567 for 1938, against £23,098 in 1937, but the chairman, Mr. J. E. Gallaway, had no...

It occasions no special surprise that De Beers Consolidated Mines should have experienced a sharp setback in 1938. The diamond trade is obviously vulnerable to trade depression,...

Sir Edward Mountain, in his review of the results of the Eagle Star Insurance Company last week, reported on two matters especially favourable to the company. The expense ratio...

The Norwich Union Life Insurance Society was one of the pioneers of life assurance in the foreign field, but at the meeting on Tuesday Mr. Ernest Hicks had regretfully to...

SATISFACTORY CURRENT BUSINESS DIVIDEND MAINTAINED THE tenth annual ordinary general meeting of P. H. Galloway, Ltd., was held on April 13th at Southern House, Cannon Street,...

NORWICH UNION LIFE INSURANCE SOCIETY RECORD NEW BUSINESS THE PRESIDENT'S REPORT DIE one hundred and thirty-first annual general meeting of the Norwich Union Life Insurance...

a Book Token for one guinea will be given to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword puzzle to be opened. Envelopes should be marked "Crossword...

The winner of Crossword Caldy View, Tenby. NEXT WEEK No. 6 is Mr. H. C. Bowen,